


Progress

by AoSfangirl81



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: Canon Compliant, F/M, FitzSimmons - Freeform, Happy Ending, Hurt/Comfort, Jemma Simmons - Freeform, Leo Fitz - Freeform, Lost Conversations, Mentions of S2, post-s3e22
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-07
Updated: 2016-08-07
Packaged: 2018-08-07 08:15:06
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,462
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7707586
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AoSfangirl81/pseuds/AoSfangirl81
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“You have a bit of a pattern of putting yourself in extreme danger, of sacrificing yourself… for me. And while I recognize it hasn’t killed you, yet, I need you to stop.” Her voice starts to shake as she thinks of all the times that he’s put himself in harm’s way for her, knowing full well she probably doesn’t know of all of them. </p><p>---</p><p>We all know what FitzSimmons were communicating to each other in those looks after Lincoln dies in the S3 finale. Here’s the convo I think they could have had about it.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Progress

Simmons softly knocks on Fitz’s door and lets herself in. Closing it behind her and leaning against it, she looks at Fitz with the same expression she gave him earlier that night when they heard Lincoln’s comms cut out. Sitting on his bed, he looks up at her and sighs, rubbing his hands in his face, “Look, Jemma, I already know what you’re going to say, so can we just skip to the end where you climb into bed and we fall asleep?” He honestly didn’t know how much energy he had to have the conversation he knew was coming. He felt so drained, so dejected, given the events over the past few days, and he felt particularly overwhelmed at what they would have to face tomorrow… picking up the pieces…again.  
  
Jemma hesitates. There’s actually nothing she wants to do more. It’s been such an incredibly exhausting day, an incredibly exhausting year, really, and they both know that out of the two of them, even on the best of days she was the least likely to initiate a difficult conversation. Her bones are heavy, her heart is heavy, and she just wants to seek comfort in the arms of the man she loves. To feel surrounded by him, to hear his heart beat and feel his breath and know that he’s alive and _here_. To let him know how unbelievably grateful she is that it wasn’t him on that plane and how unbelievably guilty she feels for even thinking that.  
  
But this is too important. _They_ are too important. In this very room, they vowed to not let anything tear them apart again, and she knows unspoken words are one of the things they’ve let do that in the past. She sighs wearily. “No Fitz, I’m afraid we can’t.” He recognizes the tired softness in her eyes and nods. “Well, can we at least both be in bed while we talk?” he asks with pleading eyes. He’ll talk about anything she wants, so long as he can touch her face, hold her hands, feel connected to her. He could feel himself going numb from the day’s events, and he needs to feel her to ground himself.  
  
Tears well up in Jemma’s eyes as she nods furiously and quickly crawls into bed with him. They fall into what is becoming a familiar position- lying on their sides, facing each other, with Jemma’s face pressed against his chest, his chin resting on her head and his arms around her. They stay there for a while, just listening to each other breathe and reveling in the fact that the cosmos have granted them another day to hold each other like this.  
  
Before she allows exhaustion to set in and sleep to overtake her, Jemma pulls back and looks up at Fitz before giving him a soft, gentle kiss. “Fitz,” she begins. “I want….no. I _need_ us to make a promise to each other. We can’t… we just can’t end up like, like Lincoln and Daisy. We can’t...I...”  
  
Fitz interrupts, “I mean, we could take the fish oil pills if you wanted, Simmons…” Jemma looks up at him, eyebrows furrowed, silently begging him to stay serious. “Sorry. I know, I know,” he says, kissing the top of her head.  
  
“Do you??” she asks, her voice rising as she lets her fear take over. “You have a bit of a pattern of putting yourself in extreme danger, of sacrificing yourself… for me. And while I recognize it hasn’t killed you, _yet_ , I need you to stop.” Her voice starts to shake as she thinks of all the times that he’s put himself in harm’s way for her, knowing full well she probably doesn’t know of all of them.  
  
Fitz sighs. “I don’t know what you want me to say, Jemma. I can’t change how I feel. I told you, I can’t live in a world without you in it...”  
  
“Yes,” she interrupts, “but do you ever think of what that means?? Of the step that happens after that?? If you risk your life for me, and you… die…” she chokes on the word, “saving me, that means you still don’t get to live in a world with me. You don’t get to live in any world at all. You’re gone.” She pauses. “It’s selfish.” she finishes, resolutely.  
  
Fitz stiffens and sits up, looking down at her. “How can risking my life for yours be selfish, Jemma? I’m doing it out of love. I can’t believe you can’t see that! If I hadn’t done what I had to do to save you, we wouldn’t even be here having this discussion right now!”  
  
Something buzzes in the back of Jemma’s head, but before she can put her finger on it, she feels herself feeding into the quick escalation. She sits up. “And I’m forever grateful, you know that. But did you see Daisy’s eyes? Did you see how destroyed she was just now? _That’s_ why it’s selfish. Because in sacrificing yourself to save me, you don’t have to live with the aftermath, you don’t have to feel the pain and the agony of losing the love of your life. You don’t have to feel _anything_ because you’ll be dead!” Her voice breaks on that last word and she covers her mouth as a sob escapes her. She feels the pain, the devastation that she knows Daisy is feeling. The fact that she could have so easily been in Daisy’s place, that Fitz would have done that without hesitation, terrifies her.  
  
“And then I have to live the rest of my life without you. _Those_ are the consequences, Fitz. Daisy, our friend who had to be sedated just to calm her down, is living those consequences right now.” Fat tears well up in her eyes and roll down her cheeks as she tries to take deep breaths, to calm herself down, to forget about the vacant, broken look in Daisy’s eyes. She’s just so tired of people risking their lives for her, feeling equally as guilty even thinking that thought, as if she were ungrateful. But she can’t help it. She can’t keep going on with that as the norm.  
  
Fitz sits and stares in front of him, wide-eyed, trying to process what Jemma is saying. The lost look on his face painfully reminds Jemma of how he would sometimes look during his recovery- when he was trying so hard to make sense of something but couldn’t grasp it. Fitz lets her words sit with him for a moment. He’d honestly never thought of it that way. He was so driven by the simple idea that _she must live_ , regardless of the consequences, that he never actually thought about what those consequences would mean. But he can’t forget the look on Daisy’s face when the comms cut out and the plane exploded. It will haunt him for nights to come. The thought of him being the cause of that for Jemma makes his heart clench. But the thought of losing her, or worse, of losing her and knowing he could have done something to prevent it, causes even more pain. He pinches the bridge of his nose in frustration and gets up to pace beside the bed as he thinks. “I hear what you’re saying, I really do, but I just don’t know…”  
  
Not wanting to lose momentum, and growing desperate to make her point, Jemma pushes forward, “Fitz, I want a partner, not a protector. If you can’t stop risking yourself, risking your life for me, then what’s the point of us even pursuing this at all??” She gestures between the two of them. He had to see how important this was to her, to _them_.  
  
“Oh, come on, what’s that even supposed to mean?” Fitz scoffs, as alarm bells go off in his head and all of his carefully buried fears bubble to the surface. “What, you’re having second thoughts??” Fitz despises that he’s letting his insecurities get the best of him, but he can’t help it. He can’t drown out that little voice whispering in the back of his head- she changed her mind, she’s walking away, she didn’t want this, she didn’t want _him_.  
  
Jemma feels her defenses go up before she can even stop them. “If that’s what you think this conversation is about… if… if you think this, _us_ , means so little to me… then you clearly haven’t heard a bloody word I’ve said!” She gets up, needing to stand and be at the same level as Fitz, to try and mask her hurt. Did he really doubt how much he meant to her? It was like after she returned from her assignment all over again. She eyes the door. She wants to leave so badly. To just escape all the thick heaviness that’s surrounding her right now. She’s already in so far over her head with this, and she feels vulnerable and exposed and misunderstood. She wraps her arms around herself for protection. It would be so easy to walk off in an indignant huff. She can already start to feel the satisfaction of slamming the door behind her. Her foot involuntarily twitches towards the door, as if her body was making the choice for her.  
  
Fitz looks up at her, wanting to lash out, to push her further, but he stops. The hurt he sees in her eyes brings him back to the present, and he takes stock of what’s really happening. Jemma, with her arms wrapped around her and tears streaming down her face, him with his hands on his hips, ready to fight. His heart lurches as he recognizes how reminiscent it is of the painful arguments they used to have right after she returned from her assignment. He feels sick to his stomach and shakes his head in frustration, and frankly, shame. They are better than this. They aren’t those people anymore. He had grown and she had grown and they had found each other again in a new, better place. They can’t let themselves backslide. They had just crossed the event horizon. There is no going back.  
  
Fitz sits down on the bed and puts his head in his hands, trying to clear the haze in his brain. _She isn’t walking away,_ he tells himself. _She’s still here._ “I just... I don’t understand,” he says slowly, calmly, trying to slow them down. “ _You_ smothered that grenade on that train, _you_ threw yourself out of the plane when...when…” He pauses, not wanting to relive that particular moment just now. “How is this any different?”  
  
Jemma sits down next to him and cautiously puts her hands in his. “I don’t know...I think both of those times were for the greater good. I had to save you _and_ Skye on the train. Our whole team would have died on the plane if I exploded… I feel like both times there was something larger than just you or me at play.” They both think about that. Feeling calmer and bolder, she starts rubbing her thumb across his hand. She inwardly lets out a sigh of relief- the haze was starting to clear and she could see the goal again. They were working through this. Together. After a few moments, she looks up at him. “Tell me what you’re thinking.”  
  
He sighs and rubs the back of his neck. “I don’t know, Jemma... it’s a bit of a catch-22, isn’t it? Clearly I don’t want to put you through...what Daisy is going through... I can’t bear the thought of causing you that kind of pain. But I also can’t bear the thought of not doing everything I can to keep you alive…If anything ever happened that I could have prevented…” He trails off.  
  
Simmons nods in understanding. “We both said we wouldn’t let anything tear us apart again, and that means even our own foolish acts of misguided bravery. I love you _._ I want a life with you. I want our love to mean fighting not just for me, but _for us_ ,” she emphasizes. “And I need you to prioritize us, not just me. Because I don’t want to live in a world without you either.”  
  
She looks over at him. He’s staring at her with shining, wet eyes, a surprised look on his face. “Ah, Jemma…can… can you say that again?”  
  
“What? That I don’t want to live in a world without you? Fitz, how could that possibly be surp…”  
  
“No,” Fitz interrupts, “the other thing.”  
  
Jemma pauses for a moment before her eyes grow wide as she realizes what she just said. She feels a warmth spread through her chest and starts to smile. It seems so silly to care so much about actually saying those words, because words have never been their thing, for better or worse. Haven’t they been saying it with their actions for far longer than either of them could really recognize? But it’s still an important moment, one she had been weighing in her head, planning for the perfect timing, the perfect moment, for weeks now. So much for being prepared, she laughs to herself. She looks up at Fitz and gives him a shy smile, “I love you. I love you so much, Fitz.” Next thing she knows, she’s being bowled over by Fitz who is covering her face with kisses, whispering, “I love you” between every kiss. She laughs as she guides his mouth to hers and kisses him gently. She pulls back and sees the goofy smile on his face and laughs. “This can’t really be a surprise to you, can it?”  
  
“Well, what with the snogging and the shagging and all, I was pretty confident you fancied me…” Fitz jokes, his eyes lighter than they’d been all night. Jemma laughs. Then his face turns slightly more serious, a shy smile forming. “I think I knew on some level. But still, it’s pretty fantastic to hear you say it.” Jemma smiles and kisses him again.  
  
“I love you,” she says again for good measure. “But we’re not done talking about this, you know.”  
  
Fitz nods solemnly. “Yeah, I know. And I wanna try, Jemma, I really do. For us.”  
  
Jemma smiles. “That’s all I ask.” She kisses him briefly and wraps her arms around him, hugging him close to her. Still not quite convinced her point is made, she is also wise enough to recognize their progress. And in their line of work, that’s worth celebrating. Fitz presses a kiss against her temple and pulls back. “Say it again,” he asks, smiling. Jemma laughs and rolls her eyes.  
  
No, this conversation wasn’t over. But suddenly tomorrow seems a bit less daunting to both of them.

**Author's Note:**

> I know FitzSimmons have their issues, and just because they're together now doesn't mean that nothing hurts, but I also love the idea of them working through some of this stuff. It's not perfect, it's usually a little messy, but they keep working. Enjoy!


End file.
